


The Boogeyman of Haddonfield, IL

by Aberstan



Category: Halloween - Franchise, Halloween Movies - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-11
Updated: 2016-05-22
Packaged: 2018-06-07 17:38:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,778
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6817462
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aberstan/pseuds/Aberstan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fifteen years after he murdered his older sister, Michael Myers broke out of Smith's Grove Sanitarium on Halloween night and attacked Laurie Strode. </p>
<p>This is a story about Tommy Doyle, who saw it happen, and grew up just wanting to understand why.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Halloween - Year 1

**Author's Note:**

> Covers the span of the Halloween series, excluding Rob Zombie's work, and diverges from canon at Halloween 6.

The first time Tommy saw the Boogeyman he was seven years old.

It was Halloween and he was on his way home from school. He was carrying his pumpkin carefully in his arms and thinking about how he and Laurie would carve it before she took him trick-or-treating, and suddenly the Boogeyman was standing in front of him on the sidewalk. Tommy jumped backward, his heart trip-trapping wildly. The pumpkin slipped from his hands and fell to the sidewalk with a sound halfway between a  _thunk_ and a  _splat_. Tommy wanted to cry out, but his voice wasn't working right. He looked up...and up.

The Boogeyman looked down at him.

It was tall, and big. It had a horrible white face and wild hair, and its eyes were dull black holes. Its breath was a low growling hiss. In and out. In and out. Tommy knew its breath would smell of rotting meat, of things it had already killed and eaten. Tommy knew, as all children know, that the Boogeyman was always hungry, always hunting. It would eat anything, but it was especially fond of children.  _But it's only supposed to come out at night,_ his mind wailed.  _Why is it here now?!_

The Boogeyman's massive paws hung limply at its sides as it regarded Tommy in silent fascination. Tommy, frozen in terror, stared back. What was it waiting for? He listened to it breathe, fixed in place,  _rooted_ to the spot, and understood suddenly that it was  _smelling_ him, it was breathing in the scent of boymeat, and any second it would strike. But for the moment the Boogeyman was frozen, too. He didn't know why. It didn't _matter_ why. If Tommy was going to get away it had to be  _right now_.

He gulped and wrenched his feet off the sidewalk. He stepped around the Boogeyman, who watched him but did not move to stop him. When he had gone a few steps his panic finally slipped the leash and Tommy broke into a run.

Tommy ran all the way home, and his mom laughed when he burst inside, sweating and breathless. He sagged back against the front door, gasping for breath. She came out of the kitchen, drying her hands.

"Sweetheart, there's going to be plenty of candy," she said. "Now get washed up before Laurie gets here, okay?"

"Okay, Mom," Tommy said, panting. He walked upstairs to get washed up.

Later that night he would see the Boogeyman again, when it broke into his house and chased him and Laurie and Lindsey Wallace from up the street. The Boogeyman crashed into the bathroom where they all hid, and it grabbed Laurie and took her away. Tommy and Lindsey huddled in the bathtub and listened to Laurie's screams as they faded down the street.

His parents came home soon after, and found them together, clutching one another and crying in the tub.

"It was the Boogeyman," Tommy sobbed when they asked him what had happened. It was all he could say.


	2. Halloween - The Next Few Years

They said the Boogeyman was just a man in a mask. His name was Michael Myers, and by the time the fire broke out in the hospital later that Halloween night, he had killed fourteen people while trying to kill Laurie. Everyone said that the Boogeyman died in the fire, too. Tommy wasn't so sure about that.

Every night for the next six months he had nightmares about the Boogeyman. When his parents stopped letting him sleep with them they got him a night light, and then one day his dad brought home a German Shepherd puppy. Between the night light and the puppy sleeping at his side, Tommy was finally able to sleep through the night.

His parents started sending Tommy to see a special doctor after Halloween. Lindsey's parents did the same, and sometimes they saw each other at the office. At school Lindsey was the only one who didn't make fun of him for still being scared of the Boogeyman. Lindsey knew what it was like. She knew the Boogeyman was real. Laurie didn't babysit him anymore, but then his parents didn't leave him alone anymore. He still saw Laurie from time to time. She looked haunted. She wasn't on crutches anymore, but you could still see scars on her arms from the fire. She looked like she wasn't getting a lot of sleep, either. Tommy made her a card and had his mom walk with him to Laurie's house so he could give it to her. Laurie cried and hugged him, and told him he was a good boy. 

"That poor girl," his mom said as they walked home. "I don't think she'll ever get over this."

###

The next year he didn't go trick-or-treating. They didn't carve pumpkins; he didn't wear a costume. Tommy had been getting steadily more anxious as the weather grew colder and the spooky decorations began to come out around town. By the time Halloween arrived again he was so anxious that he could hardly eat, and his mom kept him home from school that day.

They left the porch light off, and he watched cartoons until it was time to wash up and go to bed. His dog, Bruiser, stayed by his side, but even so, Tommy couldn't sleep until the sun was peeking up in the sky and he knew Halloween was over.

###

Two years after they ran from the Boogeyman, the Wallace family moved away from Haddonfield. Before they left, Lindsey came to see Tommy, and she gave him a hug. They were nine years old, and Lindsey had grown tall and coltish. She wore her strawberry blond hair long and loose, but had abandoned the princess dresses for jeans and t-shirts, and she scuffed her sneakers on the sidewalk as they talked. Her thumbs hooked into the pockets of her jeans.

"I don't think the Boogeyman's gonna come back," she told him. "But my mom says we need a new start. You know?"

"Yeah," Tommy said with a shrug. He did. "It's not gonna be the same without you here."

"Hey," Lindsey said, and gave him an affectionate little punch on the shoulder. "If anybody makes fun of you, kick 'em in the shins."

Tommy grinned, nodding. "If anybody in your new school makes fun of you, punch 'em in the nose."

Lindsey grinned back at him. They hugged again, and then Lindsey got in her parents' car. She waved at him as they drove away. Tommy waved back. When the car disappeared around the corner at the end of the street, he felt his heart sink a little.

###

Over the next few years Tommy Doyle gradually moved on. October didn't scare him as much anymore, although he still didn't go out on Halloween night. He didn't like talking about the night Michael Myers (whom he still thought of as  _The Boogeyman_ , perhaps would always think of as  _The Boogeyman_ ) had come to his house while in the midst of a killing spree. Every few months or so he received a call or a card from Dr. Loomis, who had been the Boogeyman's keeper before Myers escaped. They always amounted to the same thing: just checking in, let me know if anything happens. Sometimes Tommy worried about the old man.

He played Little League. He made friends. He read comic books and rode his bike and tried not to hear the stories about the Halloween Massacre.

_They say he pinned the guy to a wall with a carving knife._

_What? That can't happen. But you know what? He drowned a nurse in boiling water._

_I heard he killed his whole family when he was just a little kid._

_Shit, man, everyone knows that._

As he made the transition from elementary school to junior high, Tommy Doyle found a kind of unhappy fame as word got around that he'd actually  _seen_ Myers that night. For a few weeks after he started junior high, other kids approached him - before and after school, in between classes, at lunch, at baseball practice - to ask him for the details. What was it  _like_ , they wanted to know. Tommy told them all to take a hike, and finally everyone left him alone.

It was better that way.

What was it like? Shit. What did they  _think_ , that he'd stopped Myers to ask for an interview?

He missed Lindsey Wallace.

###

Tommy had just turned fifteen when he heard that Laurie Strode had left town. She'd been having a bad time adjusting to everything (and no fucking wonder; Dr. Loomis told him that she was actually  _related_ to the Boogeyman, and Tommy's heart broke for her; poor Laurie just couldn't catch a break), and finally she just couldn't take it anymore. She'd had a kid of her own, who was living with a foster family because Laurie's parents were dead, and Laurie herself had been judged unfit to care for the girl. Tommy saw little Jamie Loyd around town sometimes, usually with her foster sister Rachel. Cute little kid, quiet and shy. Tommy wondered if she knew about the Boogeyman, and hoped not.

And then that Halloween, the unthinkable happened.

Myers, supposedly eight years dead and gone, came back to Haddonfield.

This time he killed seventeen people, all in the name of trying to get at Jamie.

Tommy Doyle stayed in his house, his eyes closed and his hands over his ears. He could hear sirens and screams outside, but he couldn't bring himself to look. If he looked, he might  _see_ , and if he saw, he was pretty sure he'd just drop dead right there and then.

Poor Jamie was the same age Tommy had been.

###

The Halloween after that, the Boogeyman came back  _again_.

But this time, no one was left when it was all over. The Boogeyman disappeared, and so did little Jamie. The constant strain got to be too much for Dr. Loomis, and the old man had a stroke and had to be rushed to the hospital. By some miracle, he recovered, but that was it. Tommy knew that if the Boogeyman showed up again, Loomis would not survive regardless of whether he got involved.

Tommy was beginning to think that Myers had help. Twenty people dead, but nearly half of those people had  _not_ been killed at Myers's hands. Someone had gone to the sheriff's station and gunned down everyone inside. Whoever that was had to have taken Myers, and they had to have taken Jamie, too.

Later, Tommy would suppose that this was when his obsession began. He would solve this and put and end to it, or he would die trying.


End file.
